North Texas Daily

Paul S. Krueger has been selected to be the new dean of the College of Engineering and is set to start on June 1, overseeing the college’s 28 different degrees and managing local and global partnerships. 

Students and researchers who have worked with Krueger in the past described a strict but nurturing work environment with an emphasis on personal growth.

“When you become chair, what’ll often happen is they will use the new funds for their own research projects, but when he became chairman, Dr. Krueger was more concerned about the work environment of the engineering department,” said Adam Cox, a researcher at Lockheed Martin and Southern Methodist University. “If there is a flaw to his leadership style, it is that he works too hard.”

Some of the college’s partnerships are with other universities such as Northwestern Polytechnical University, Nanjing Forestry University and South China Normal University. These cross-college relationships offer options like collaborative research projects students can take part in. Krueger completed his bachelor’s in mechanical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and has presided as chair of SMU’s Lyle School of Engineering since 2019.

“One of the things that attracted me to UNT would be the rapid growth of engineering there – in a relatively short amount of time, really – the college made a big statement, especially here in the DFW area with instituting the college and growing it to where it’s at right now,” Krueger said. “Seeing that moving forward is important, I think there are some things I would like to see to make it continue as well as strengthen its position.”

International partnership agreements are a pathway for students to form relationships with universities to earn an advanced degree from the university, according to the COE website.

“I think internally [we make] sure we are leveraging any synergy that we have, so we can engage in those cooperative interactions as well as with partnerships within the college and within the university,” Krueger said. “At a large university like this, there is a lot of emphasis on research activities that elevate our scholarship and the knowledge we bring to both our students and the community. That’s a big part of UNT and making sure we have connections between departments and faculty building on those synergies strengthens that.”

Shengli Fu, the current interim dean as of July 2022, plans to remain at the university in a teaching position, and formerly served as chair of electrical engineering. Currently, Xinrong Li serves as interim chair of the electrical engineering department. Fu was hired in 2005 as an assistant professor, and later as an associate professor.

Fu described an already tight-knit community eager for collaboration and excited to welcome Krueger into the position of dean. Fu believes the COE staff are close due to the entire department being housed in one building, which promotes close collaboration in research throughout the college.

“It’s a bit different from the main campus, because we are under the same building, physically under the same umbrella, and we see each other every day,” Fu said. “The project isn’t just faculty from one department, it’s always from multiple departments. From manufacturing, over at material sciences, to electrical engineering, to, of course, AI, which encompasses all the departments.”

Krueger said he expects the students at the COE to be the ones to lead the university into the future.

“One of the things that’s exciting about UNT is that that’s already there, in terms of the faculty being interested in collaborating – I just want to make sure we really promote that and make sure we have all the tools and structures in place to make it grow and find those partnerships to make UNT even stronger than it already is,” Krueger said.

Image Source University of North Texas